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BU joins college study project
Effort to help other schools internationalize
By Katie Ellis
Binghamton University is one of only eight institutions nationwide to be selected by the American Council on Education for a major project to enhance American efforts in the comprehensive internationalization of undergraduate education.
“Promising Practices: Institutional Models of Comprehensive Internationalization” is being funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Over the next 18 months, each of the eight institutions will participate in the “Promising Practices” project as they document strategies, innovations and good practices for enhancing internationalization. The eight were chosen to represent a wide range of institutions, public and private, as well as from the community college to research university levels. Together they will develop an institutional audit that can help other schools gauge their success in internationalization. Participating schools will also meet to share insights and experiences.
H. Stephen Straight, associate provost for undergraduate education and learning, leads Binghamton’s Promising Practices team. “The institutional audit will be, I would bet, a merging of all that the eight institutions do,” he said.
Katharine Krebs, director of international education, drafted the project application and Richard Dalfi-
ume, deputy to the president, worked with Krebs and Straight to put the application in final form for submission to the council.
Binghamton’s application focused on the University’s accomplishments in comprehensive internationalization over the past decade and how those accomplishments were achieved, said Straight. “There are three key factors to Binghamton’s transformation,” he said. “The diversity of the University’s student body, the specificity of presidential leadership and the strength of its faculty and staff.”
With 32 percent of Binghamton students identifying themselves as other than Caucasian, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to know that 44 percent speak a language other than English at home at least some of the time, said Straight. “Binghamton has capitalized on this diversity, with support from its leadership,” he said. “President DeFleur established internationalization as a priority when she came here, and appointed the first director of international education in 1994.
“The president has also established a University Award for Excellence in International Education that complements existing University awards for excellence in research, teaching and service,” he said.
In addition, Straight referred to the University’s international mission statement, adopted in 1996. “Our mission statement outlines specific goals including increasing participation in study abroad, developing new off-campus international and intercultural programs and increasing the number of students who are proficient or fluent in a language other than English,” he said.
Binghamton demonstrated to the council just how comprehensive its internationalization is by highlighting three major accomplishments: internationalization across the curriculum, enhanced international specialization and the growth of study abroad.
Languages Across the Curriculum and the University’s global interdependencies requirement indicate a commitment to incorporating an international perspective into the classroom, said Straight. “Since 1995, we’ve also had the International Studies Certificate, and beginning this year the Global Studies Integrated Curriculum. In addition, we regularly teach 11 languages.
“As for study abroad, we’ve had sizeable increases in the programs we offer, as well as in the proportion of study abroad participants in non-Western European destinations,” he said.
The first meeting of Promising Practices participants will be November 13-14 in Washington, D.C., and will be attended by Binghamton team members Straight; Krebs; Charles Burroughs, director of the Global Studies Integrated Curriculum; and Paul Steidlmeier, director of undergraduate studies for the School of Management. A fifth member of the team is Burrell Montz, past chair of the International Education Advisory Committee.
Participating institutions besides Binghamton are:
Appalachian State University
Beaver College
Dickinson College
Indiana University, Bloomington
Kapi’olani Community College
Missouri Southern State
Tidewater Community College
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